My wacky Sunday (or “Why the early Dell Dimension 8100 was made at the wrong time”)

Dell usually makes pretty good computers, unfortunately the Dimension 8100 was …

This is not really news, but Caesar suggested I share this since it is rather humorous and I am sure many of you can relate. As some of you know by now, I run my own computer consulting and repair biz in Boston and service mostly SOHO users. As you can probably imagine, I have seen my fair share of terrible things happen to computers on a regular basis. Just yesterday, I went to visit a customer to fix a computer that had 5 different types of spyware and at least 3 different worms/viruses. In addition to this, the registry was so corrupt that the computer would not even boot into WindowsME safe-mode. Not too difficult, right? Good old "scanreg /fix" was able to repair the registry and Ad-aware was able to nail most of the spyware. Unfortunately, the user also had no firewall or any anti-virus software. After cleaning out all the spyware, viruses, and worms, I was unable to get Norton Anti-virus 2004 to install. (which may or may not be Symantec's fault) Despite this, I managed to wrap things up in just under 3 hours with the computer in working order and a copy of Grisoft AVG Free and Zone Alarm Basic. Knocking on wood, I did one last check and was convinced that this computer is fixed. Famous last words...

At this point, I was pretty much ready to head home. The last task was to install Age of Mythology for the young son who has been wanting to play this for a while. I was a little worried that the machine (Pentium4 1.3Ghz) was a little underpowered and lacking in the RAM department (128MB), but figured that since it met the minimum specs, it would probably run fine. Unfortunately, the install failed halfway through with a write-failure message. Was the drive full? No. Fingerprints on the CD-ROM? No. Bad hard drive? Hmm... Let me look... Uh-oh. It's an IBM Deathstar 60GXP. Running the IBM/Hitachi Drive Fitness Test quickly confirmed that the drive was pretty much on the verge of failure. Crazy.

Now, it is my opinion that Dell generally makes good computers, but I am convinced that the early Dell Dimension 8100 (arguably not a bad computer line overall) was just made at the wrong time. Why? Here are the reasons:

Pentium4 1.3Ghz - The first generation Pentium4 CPUs perform rather
poorly when compared to the high-end Pentium3. The P4 1.3Ghz also has a very
limited upgrade path due to its Socket423, which was quickly phased out.

Rambus RDRAM 128MB - While not inherently bad, RDRAM has fallen out of
favor (was it ever in favor?) of the PC market. It is still expensive and
because of its unpopularity, it can be difficult to find. What made it worse
in this scenario was that the machine had all of its RIMM slots filled. Ugh!

Windows ME - Let's face it: WinME was a unfortunate release. It did
not have the stability and security of Windows2000 Pro, yet was supposed to be
better than Windows98 SE. I think most people I know won't touch WinME with a
10-foot pole.

IBM Deskstar 60GXP - IBM used to make great hard drives. Anyone who
has owned a 14GXP can attest to this. Unfortunately, the 60GXP (as well as the
75GXP) was prone to high rates of premature drive failure. At the time, we all
assumed that IBM had fixed the problems with the 75GXP and that the 60GXP
would be much more reliable. Sadly, there was no way to truly know this at the
time.

The really sad part is that I am not sure Dell could have avoided this. The Pentium4 was "the future." RDRAM was touted for its Quad Data Rate and high throughput. And the IBM 60GXP was getting rave reviews. As we all know now, the Pentium4 is having trouble scaling, Rambus decided to litigate rather than innovate, and the 60GXP has abnormally high rates of failure, just like the 75GXP before it. And WindowsME? Hmm... Well, I guess that one could have been avoided. It's funny how quickly things change in just a few years.